The spider let out an inhuman shriek as, using the ‘bladed’ part of two of its front legs, it slashed at Sangrelia, both side attacks colliding, pushing Mikael backward half a step. Clearly, the spider had the advantage, an advantage that was only more pronounced as Mikael began to breathe heavily; clearly, his injuries were taking a major toll.

‘I need to finish this fight fast or my condition will deteriorate further, making it impossible to head deeper into the Savagefang Mountain Range before the empty territories get filled!’

Understanding what was at stake and that he couldn’t try to brute force it, Mikael disengaged Sangrelia before slashing at another tricky angle, this time using Lunar Shadow Slash.

If strength didn’t work, he would use speed.

Slash

His sudden burst of speed took the demonic beast by surprise, and because of that he was able to blind two of its eyes, making purple blood splash as the spider let out an inhuman shriek from the pain.

‘A chance.’

His eyes lit up, and taking advantage of the demonic beast’s momentary distraction, he continued with his Lunar Shadow Slash, this time aiming toward the soft part of the two front legs. This part wasn’t blade—it was the ‘hilt of the sword’, in a way, so it was far less durable.

If his attack succeeded, the spider would lose its two main ways of attacking, and then there would only be death left for it.

Unfortunately—

All demonic beasts were battle-hardened figures that needed to cross rivers of blood to reach their current ‘cultivation realm’. The world of demonic beasts was one of extreme brutality where the law of the strong was omnipresent, so inexperienced demonic beasts? They were nearly non-existent, and sadly, the spider was extremely experienced.

Clank.

Pushing through the pain, the spider sensed the threat coming from Sangrelia and, just in time, changed his leg’s position in a way that the blade part collided with Sangrelia.

“Tsk”, ‘If I wasn’t injured it would never have been able to react in time,’ he thought, but surprisingly, there wasn’t even an ounce of frustration in his mind. It was more like he was detached? Yes, detached would be a good term!

His analysis was a calm one of an objective fact, not something brought by frustration. At this instant, Mikael was extremely calm, his mind working at an unimaginable speed as his eyes captured every twitch, every motion of his enemy.

Clank clank clank.

Sangrelia and the spider’s front legs clashed tens of times in a single second, with Mikael's condition deteriorating rapidly, but weirdly enough, even as he became ‘weaker’, the result of the fight didn’t show it…

Squelch.

Sangrelia was able to pass through the spider’s defense, leaving a small cut on its massive body. It wasn’t much, but it was a sign that something wasn’t right. After all, Mikael was weakening by the second, but the fight progressively tilted more and more in his favor.

It was a truly puzzling situation that at first glance seemed entirely illogical, but if somebody looked into Mikael's eyes, they would see it.

He was… Analyzing.

Every twitch, every motion of his opponent was computed by him. From the smallest of muscle twitches, to the blinking of an eye, to the movement of a leg. All were in his eyes and were computed by him.

Using the information he acquired, he then calculated every possible action that his enemy could take before reacting in function of the most probable choice that it would take. In this way, he reacted before his enemy even began to maneuver, achieving a kind of precognition.

SCHK!

A small gash appeared on Mikael's shoulder.

From that, it could be seen that Mikael’s ‘precognition’ wasn’t omnipotent—which was only logical. After all, in a world of cultivation, physics and logic were often… optional.

Normally, in a more physic-driven world, there would always be signs preceding an attack—a twitch of a muscle, a movement of the body, and similar signs, but in a cultivation world, things like that weren’t always followed.

Because of that, Mikael sometimes miscalculated, which caused him to either miss an attack in the best case or get small injuries in the worst case, but with each passing second, Mikael was getting progressively more precise.

His predictions began to get more and more precise by the moment as he began to get used to fighting in this new unique way while at the same time getting a hang of the spider’s pattern of movement.

Getting better globally at this business of ‘precognition’ wasn’t something that could happen in a single fight. No, it would take him a lot more fights before he began to be truly proficient at it, but… learning the spider’s pattern mid-fight…

It was an entirely different story.

Slash.

KREEEEEEEH!

Using a habit of the demonic beast against it, he was able to take advantage of a self-created opening to cut one of its front legs and then—

He began to cut it down, methodically like a butcher. The moment the spider lost one of its main ways of attack, it was already doomed.

Which was only proven when, in the next minutes, he didn’t get a single injury while the spider continued to accumulate gashes and severe injuries.

This butchery continued until the moment when Mikael cut down its last leg.

Thud.

The large spider collided with the ground with a loud thud, all of its legs severed and it bathing in a pool of purple blood. Its multiple eyes looked up at Mikael, who glanced at it indifferently before ending its life with a few well-placed Lunar Shadow Slash.

“Ahhhhh.” Mikael let out a long, tired exhale that spoke of bone-deep exhaustion and then—he staggered.

The only reason he didn’t fall to the ground was because he plunged Sangrelia into the ground, allowing him to use her as a ‘limping stick’ which supported his weight.

“Fuck, my condition deteriorated further. With that, I have another three hours of added recovery, and if I count the poison…” he looked at some of his wounds that had a purple hue, “I could take up to five hours in total. What a waste of time!”

Even though Mikael sounded annoyed, the wide smile on his face told a different story. ‘…So Unrestrained Mind can be used like that too… letting me predict every move my opponent makes, almost like a kind of precognition in battle. In a fight, that can multiply my combat power—what a terrifying ability.’

He crouched down and began extracting the demonic core from the spider, his hands moving on their own while his thoughts continued, ‘Theoretically, I could’ve done something like that with my mind, as it was already strong enough. But in practice? Not a chance. It would’ve been far too clumsy and slow to use in real-time.’

‘But now… it’s different. Unrestrained Mind didn’t just break the way I think—it broke the limits placed on what my mind can even do. If before I had a strong human mind, now I have an Unrestrained one.’

‘No matter how strong a human mind gets, there will always be things it’s naturally better at, like emotional intelligence or maybe imagination… creativity too, I guess. And on the other side, there are always weaknesses, like memory, calculations, that kind of stuff. I’m sure there are others too, but I can’t list them off the top of my head.’

‘But from now on… those weaknesses just don’t exist for me anymore. The fight with that spider demonic beast proved it. My mind can now do things that a normal cultivator’s never could, even if their mental power was tens of times stronger. Simply because their minds aren’t designed to handle it.’

“This is a qualitative evolution,” he murmured, voice low but quietly ecstatic.

At this moment, even as his body was in pain, Mikael continued the extraction of the demonic beast core while humming something in a low voice, clearly in an excellent mood.

It didn’t take long before the demonic beast's most valuable part was extracted and safely stored in his storage ring, sadly he couldn’t take the rest of the demonic beast's body as his storage ring was far far too small to be able to handle it.

Being only 10 meters cubes it would be full in no time, if he took the demonic beasts full bodies, because of that he didn’t have the choice but to only take their demonic core. With this method there was some waste but it was still better than nothing right?

At least, that’s what Mikael told himself to feel better about abandoning the Titanhide Rhino’s body after extracting only its demonic core.

‘It was really a waste…’ he thought before shaking his head and brushing the thought aside. Without hesitation he chose to not linger beside the spider’s body any longer, knowing that the scent of blood would attract other predators soon enough—and he was proven right when, minutes after he left, a Mid-stage demonic beast arrived at the ‘crime scene’.

The four-legged beast scanned its surroundings in search of the killer, but not seeing anything, it didn’t care and began to devour the spider carcass.

Meanwhile, Mikael, unaware of the calamity he narrowly evaded, was making his way through the ‘forest’, heading toward where his Foresight of Heaven’s Mandate was guiding him, indicating it would be safe.

His trek continued without any hiccups. He didn’t meet other Spiritual Foundation Realm demonic beasts, though he did encounter some in the Body Forging Realm, but even a critically injured Mikael was still able to dispatch them with relative ease.

Fortunately, after nearly an entire hour of relatively slow, because of his condition, walking, he arrived at the ‘safe zone’ he was feeling through his Foresight of Heaven’s Mandate

sense, which was a small cave.

After verifying that it was truly safe and that he wouldn’t get attacked while recovering, Mikael’s back collided with a stony wall before he let himself slide against it, falling to the ground with a thud.

“Arghhh.” A pained groan escaped Mikael’s mouth as he felt the pain and fatigue he previously ignored hit him all at once.

Mikael’s eyelids grew fuzzy. At this moment, all he wanted was to sleep, but pushing through the haze, he controlled himself, as he knew that sleeping, while tempting at this instant, would be something he would regret, as it would slow down his recovery in comparison to meditating, which was faster.

“A last effort,” he murmured to himself before, in a display of inhuman will, he shifted position and began to meditate, concentrating on accelerating his healing as much as possible.

His deep and long breathing echoed softly in the cave, steady and unwavering, as he focused nearly all of his attention on recovery, leaving only a small thread of awareness to monitor his surroundings, just enough to ensure that no unwanted ‘guest’ would catch him off guard in his vulnerable state.

In this way, five hours quickly passed. ‘Now I’m in the same condition as when I left Yulan and Lifen behind… what a damn waste of time! Now I’m even further behind in my schedule of entering the demonic beast territories.’

‘If I’m not wrong, I’ve maybe three to four days left—if I’m particularly lucky—before these currently empty territories get reoccupied by demonic beasts, which means that in two days at the latest, I need to have recovered to a sufficient degree so that exploring these currently “empty” territories won’t be too dangerous… or else forget it!’

As these thoughts passed through his mind, Mikael redoubled his efforts to speed up his recovery. After all, he couldn’t afford to waste a single moment—he was already far behind schedule, mainly due to the time needed to heal, but also because of one simple fact: he had decided to talk with Yulan and Lifen!

Yes, by speaking with the girls, he had delayed his recovery. It might seem counterintuitive, but in truth it was entirely logical—by talking, he had not only stopped meditating, which could have accelerated the healing process, but worse, through the constant movement and speaking, he had in a way been ‘injuring’ himself further, and so his recovery had slowed down even more.

Did Mikael not know this?

Of course he knew! But he didn’t care. His mind was now entirely Unrestrained, free of all limitations, so it would be the height of irony if the only limitation left was one that he imposed on himself—for that reason, even knowing it wasn’t the ‘optimal’ path, he did what he wanted and talked, flirted with the girls, even if it was painful and delayed his recovery.

💬Got Thoughts? I read every comment, and your words genuinely shape Mikael’s path.

———

A/N:

Hello everyone, back with another chapter of Ascension Through the Records! This time, we saw that even critically injured Mikael isn’t someone to fuck around with.

At the same time, we saw Unrestrained Mind start to reveal more of its potential—which Mikael expected. After all, if it was only something that made him mentally free, he doubts it would’ve required a Rank 7 Military Rank’s guidance.

This ‘precognition’ will definitely be overpowered in the right hands (Mikael’s, of course). We also got a glimpse into Mikael’s current mindset—he’s accepted that not taking the most optimal path is fine, as long as it aligns with what he wants.

How will that affect him in future situations? That’s something we’ll have to see.

———

📚 Chapters ahead await on Patreon: www./SDASLUMMY

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Glad you’re walking this path with me.

— End of Chapter —